Mission Sensoriums: Spanish Colonization, Church Bells, and the California Indians: Bernard Gordillo (Yale University)

About the Talk:
A recent California Indian movement to remove church bell symbols in the city of Santa Cruz underscored ongoing tensions between Native communities and public commemorations of the state's Spanish history. Known as the El Camino Real Bell Markers, the symbols have become a nexus for reckoning with the colonial past. Valentin Lopez, Chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, has charged, "these bells are deeply painful symbols that celebrate the destruction, domination, and erasure of our people... They are constant reminders that our people and our history continue to be disregarded to this day." Informed by consultations with California Indian scholars and community members, my presentation examines mission bell sounds and symbols in California, drawing connections between the sacred function of the bell within the Spanish mission sensorium and its late modern guise as a contested emblem of state identity and heritage. Situating the mission bell as a crucial tool of mass communication in the colonization and evangelization of Native peoples, I will explore simulacra like the El Camino Real Bell Marker, which continue to reinscribe historical violence for the California Indians.

About the Speaker:
Bernard Gordillo Brockmann is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. His work on the California Mission Bells is supported by Critical Mission Studies, a collaborative research project at the University of California that reconsiders the history of the California colonial missions from the perspective of Native and Mexican/Mexican-American voices. His book project, Canto de Marte: Art Music, Popular Culture, and U.S. Intervention in Nicaragua, is currently under contract with the Oxford University Press Series Currents in Latin American and Iberian Music.